gospel
noun · verb
Simple meaning
An account of those aspects of Jesus' life, generally written during the first several centuries of the Common Era.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
gahspuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɡɑspəl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An account of those aspects of Jesus' life, generally written during the first several centuries of the Common Era.
Protestantism
The teaching of Divine grace as distinguished from the Law or Divine commandments.
A message expected to have positive reception or effect, one promoted as offering important (or even infallible) guiding principles.
Folk music consisting of a genre of a cappella music originating with Black slaves in the United States and featuring call and response; influential on the development of other genres of popular music (especially soul)
uncountable
That which is absolutely authoritative (definitive).
uncountable
Gospel music.
verb
transitive
To instruct in, declare, or communicate the gospel; to evangelise.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An account of those aspects of Jesus' life, generally written during the first several centuries of the Common Era.
Used this way, gospel is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use gospel
- “Newton's writings were gospel for those who followed.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The four books in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that tell the story of Christ's life and teachings.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
One of the four Gospels in the New Testament.
The shortest of the four Gospels in the New Testament.
One of the Gospels in the New Testament.
One of the four Gospels in the New Testament.
Folk music consisting of a genre of a cappella music originating with Black slaves in the United States and featuring call and response.
An unquestionable truth.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.